Publications Details
The synthesis of solar radiation data for sizing stand-alone photovoltaic systems
Research has shown that long-term hourly insolation data are necessary to properly size stand-alone photovoltaic systems. Even if these data are available, their direct use requires extensive computing capabilities and is not practical on a routine basis. This paper describes a three-step model that generates realistic long-term hourly insolations from average monthly insolations. The model executes rapidly on a personal computer and generates the hourly data needed to properly size stand-alone systems. The approach used to develop this model was unique in that system performance predictions rather than statistical properties were used to verify that the synthetic data were representative of actual data. Results of verification tests show that array sizes resulting from the synthetic data are within 6% of the array sizes resulting from actual hourly data for any system with at least two days of energy storage. 5 figs., 4 tabs.